Washburn's Thomas builds case for major solar event in year 775

Brian Thomas,
associate professor of physics and astronomy at Washburn
University, calls his
latest collaboration “a nice example of how science is supposed
to work.”

Thomas
and Adrian Melott, a physics
and astronomy professor at the University of Kansas, found
something in a
journal article earlier this year and got to work. A group of
Japanese
scientists discovered in tree samples a spike in the amount of
Carbon-14 in the
atmosphere in the years 774 and 775. They went on to theorize
its cause and
ruled out a solar event based on their calculations.

Thomas
and Melott noticed that those
calculations assumed the solar event, a coronal mass ejection,
would emit
energy evenly in every direction from the sun. But that’s not
how the
complicated energy bursts at the sun’s surface actually work,
Thomas said.

In
their response to the work of those
Japanese scientists, which appears in the November online
edition of Nature as
a “brief
communication arising,”
Thomas and Melott show that it is plausible that a coronal mass
ejection is
responsible for the large increase in Carbon-14 that was
discovered to have
occurred in the Eighth Century.

“Science
is very self-correcting, I
would say,” Thomas said. The Japanese scientists discovered the
Carbon-14
spike. Thomas and Melott believe that spike could have been
caused by an event
at the surface of the sun. That provides one more data point and
further
opportunity for study related to prediction and preparedness for
future solar
events.

“What
we can say is that given our
estimates, this coronal mass ejection is something like 20-times
the largest
that’s happened in recent times,” said Thomas, who did the
calculations for the
response Melott and he wrote. The largest known event, in 1859,
caused
significant geomagnetic storms and disabled portions of the
telegraph system in
addition to other environmental effects.

A
coronal mass ejection, or solar
flare, of the intensity needed to create a Carbon-14 spike of
the magnitude
discovered by the Japanese scientists would have major
consequences today,
Thomas said. Effects could include damage to the ozone layer,
increased skin
cancer rates, multiple years of damaged crops and decimation of
global
electrical, satellite and telecommunications grids.

A
coronal mass ejection of that
intensity “didn’t match what had occurred before,” Thomas said.
One group of
scientists ruled it out as a possibility and “we brought it back
into the
plausible range.”

What's an Ichabod?

Washburn's mascot, the Ichabod, honors the school's early benefactor, Ichabod Washburn, a 19th century Massachusetts industrialist. The original design of the studious-looking, tuxedo-clad figure was created in 1938 by Bradbury Thompson (ba '34), who became an internationally acclaimed graphic artist. Design wasn't Thompson's only consideration. To the stylized Ichabod the artist attributed the qualities of "...courage and enthusiasm, as shown by his brisk walk. He is democratic and courteous, for he tips his hat as he passes. Sincere in his search for truth and knowledge, he studiously carries a book under his arm..."